Read: Islands of Abandonment by Cal Flyn ★★★★★ 📚
The book travels to places abandoned by people & recovered to varying degrees by nature. It evokes the ‘islands’ weirdness powerfully. The last chapters go further, reaching into deep time, climate crisis & even faith. Marvellous.
Tag: ★★★★★
Read: Blank Pages and Other Stories – Bernard MacLaverty ★★★★★ 📚
Quite spare stories, filled with details. Mostly around loss, grief or difficult lives.
Read: Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead ★★★★★ 📚
Great book, story of fictional woman aviator who circles the globe, embedded in family history & film of her life. Covering a lot of ground, in all senses, it pretty much all fits together.
Read: O Caledonia by Elspeth Barker ★★★★★📚
2022 off to a good start. Brilliant fun. Short strange life of Scot’s girl. Gothic home, weird family, horrible school. Laugh out loud & touching.
Read: Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead ★★★★★📚
Lighter than The Nickel Boys.I was expecting something akin to Chester Himes but this was gentler, more thoughtful & a more absorbing read. Politics handled lightly. I hope Ray, keeps out of trouble, if not I want to read about it.
Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell
Read: Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell ★★★★★ 📚 I enjoyed everything about this, the detail of life at the time and the natural world and the sadness. The idea of Shakespeare as almost a secondary character is solid.
Olive Again by Elizabeth Strout
Read Olive Again by Elizabeth Strout ★★★★★, maybe not quite as great as Olive Kitteridge but still… got better and better as it went on and the last paragraph… 📚
Olive Kitteridge
Read: Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout ★★★★★ As good as I expected. I was completely absorbed by stories. Probably the last book I’ll finish this year and possible the best.
Read: The Book of Night Women by Marlon James ★★★★★ this is a hard book to put down but hard to read the iniquity and violence.
Midwinter Break by Bernard MacLaverty, beautiful book. Don’t think there was anything I did not like about this. 📚